As we enter the second act of summer, a lot of folks are taking the time to head outside and enjoy the sunshine. The folks at Humble Bundle are making it easy for the indoor cats to enjoy their favorite activity. They currently have two massive role playing game book bundles for those of us who prefer to curl up in the air conditioning with a good book (or, in this case, a PDF).
I discussed the Roll Big or Go Home bundle last week, so now it’s time to talk about the Numenera bundle which features 45 titles at the highest level. This is a massive chunk of the game line for an amazing price. A portion of the proceeds benefit the ACLU.
What Is Numenera?
Numenera is a future fantasy roleplaying game where players explore The Ninth World. There are wrecks and relics full of unimaginable technology for the players to discover. It’s like Dungeons & Dragons viewed through a post apocalyptic lens with Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law etched on the side: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
The Kickstarter that launched Numenera was one of the first big six figure successes in tabletop games. It created Monte Cook Games and was the first game to use the Cypher System. The line established many of the hallmarks of the company like simple rules, well-referenced rulebooks and stunning artwork.
Numenera Corebooks
This Humble Bundle offer contains the two main core books with Numenera: Discovery and Numenera: Destiny. It also contains the Numenera Player’s Guide to share with the table. The guide contains everything a player needs to know about the setting and how to make characters.
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These books expand the original core book with new classes, player options and information about the Ninth World. They keep the focus on exploration and discovery while also adding more advice and guidance on the communities where characters live in between their adventures. Even a billion years in the future, players want characters back home to protect, family members to love and rivals to defeat.
Numenera Adventures
The core books contain some adventures to get Game Masters started but it’s always good to have more ready to go. They can serve as inspiration, be split up into original stories, or even be last minite drop ins for those weeks when game prep is too much.
My favorite adventure in this offer is Escape From The Jade Colossus. It drops players into Numenera’s version of a megadungeon and challenges them with shifting rooms, deadly creatures and an iconic location. It’s great for players who want to kick off a campaign to try out the game as a one shot.
Numenera Locations
The Jade Colossus is but one of many weird locations in the Ninth World. There’s a guide book to the entire world that can inspire GMs as well as a collection of smaller locations called Vertices. Any one of these books could be the basis of a campaign.
There are also books that detail specific types of areas. I really enjoyed Into The Night which suggests that our planet is not the only thing that’s changed over the millenia. It makes perfect sense that if this game is about sicence fantasy, why not include a campaign option that heads out into the stars?
Numenera Bestiaries
Adversaries are an important part of any campaign. With strange devices that defy the laws of science a we know them, that kicks it up a notch for the wild animals and monsters that inhabit these dangerous spaces. There are three books of antagonists available as part of the Humble Bundle.
Non Player Characters are simple in the Cypher System with a level rating that stands as a general difficulty number and a handful of special powers. Simple, however, does not mean uninteresting and each gets a page long write up complimented by the excellent art team. It’s very easy to flip through these books, get caught by a great bit of art and then suddenly start dreaming up a proper scenario.
Numenera Sourcebooks
Numenera has been around
Numenera Glimmers
